This Is Why I'm Like This: Lyft

  I have concluded that Lyft causes me too much anxiety.
  This is not shocking to anyone who knows me.
   All you have to know is that it's completely online. On your phone. Technology. 100%.
   The Gargoyle.
   No humans.
   The only human interaction...wait, I'm getting ahead.
   Last summer I thought I'd look into Lyft and Uber. I heard it was easy money, your own hours, All Of The Things. But I couldn't manage the application, and when the photo of my registration would not upload to my email from my phone so that I could download it onto my laptop and upload it to the open application on my laptop, I stopped. That was enough. I had already battled the gargoyle to wrestle my teaching certification renewal the previous summer, and I was still exhausted. I had to get someone at the CDE on the phone and yell at them, only to have them tell me I had to do it online. They would not allow any snail mail, faxes or, God Forbid, humans occupying their lobby. Which was not a veiled threat. Some poor government employee had to sit on the phone with me and Gerber baby walk me through the entire thing. We all needed a summer vacation after that summer vacation. Lyft was intended for extra money and not worth another episode of Kryssi Vs. The Gargoyle. Besides, there are no humans to call at Lyft, and I was stymied. It's entirely run by robots.
   On Saturday, after much self wrestling over technology and how I am not anybody's bitch, I sat in my chair by the window, laptop open, application open, all of my documents photographed and ready to go. Then my registration would not upload to my email and I started talking to myself. After a few minutes, Harper, who was in the other chair and who is usually both immune to and annoyed by my continuous technological travesties, walked over to me and just took my phone. Usually she ignores me and spits "Why don't you just ask me to help?" Not this time, this time she said "You have to do it from the app," and proceeded to finish my application. Apparently she had reached her threshold as well. In seconds. This is where I remind you that, technically, it took me a year to finish the application. And, technically,I did not finish it, my daughter did.
  Now, don't get ahead and start wondering how OH HOW is kryssi, who cannot manage her voicemail, let alone an app, going to function on nothing but an app? With no humans. Hold on, I'll get there.
   Using google maps, which I have managed to figure out recently, I located the Lyft inspection location. Much to my chagrin, it shares a building with a pub. Now that's a terrible idea, isn't it? Drive for Lyft, stop by the pub. Had Jim come with me to the inspection, this would be a different story, ending with "So we have a new pub". When I entered the building, I was shocked that there were human beings. None of whom were over the age of 25. but human beings. I signed into the kiosk, even though I was the only one there and the humans could see me with their eyeballs, and waited for someone to say my name.  I was told to fill out the thing and go sit in my car with the hazards on. They could have told me that when I entered by looking at me, but no, I had to put my name in the kiosk so they could read it off of the screen.
   Really?
   So I go to my car.
   I have no idea where the hazards are.
   I text Jim and Harper asking about the location of my hazards. I get out the owner's manual. Harp sends me a pic of the hazards on her Subaru, as the button is in the same place. I turn on the hazards.     The sheet they gave me says "Turn on your lights."
   I have automatic lights, "daytime running lights", whatever. I can control them?
   Owner's manual.
   The 20 something "mechanic" comes out and asks me to flip  my lights. I tell him they are on. He asks me to flip the high beams.
   I turn on the windshield wipers.
  This is going well. I should not be trusted to shuffle people to and fro across town in my vehicle.
  He writes down my VIN number, because I was supposed to but I don't know where that is.Also when he asked me, I could neither hear him or read his lips over the windshield wipers. I push the brakes when asked--I know where they are---and he hands me the clipboard, telling me to fill in my license plate number. His look suggests that if I cannot locate my license plate to record the number, it'd be best if I just leave and go no further. Perhaps walk over to the pub and call it a day.
   I return inside to the weird people who don't look at other people with the clipboard and am sent to the "classroom" to see the nurse practitioner. I question her authenticity as her stethoscope looks like one the girls had when they were little, and this tiny woman is maybe 13 years old. Seriously. She's a sprite. Adorable, but not an adult human and not a nurse. She asks me questions I could clearly lie about, takes my blood pressure and marks me as healthy enough to shuffle people to and fro across town in my vehicle.
   My final stop is a young man who makes sure I've taken photos of my health paper and inspection and loaded them into the app. When I struggle because my buttons don't all work, or I can't work them, he helps me and then sits me in front of a ten minute video intended to train and prepare me to shuffle people to and fro across town in my vehicle.
   I watch a video of two millennials gushing at the virtues of Lyft and "demonstrating" the use of the app. Which means they assume you know what they are talking about and they just pose around the pictures. I do not know what they are talking about, and am more vexed than I was before I started.  Steering wheel? How do I know if there is a ride? How do I accept it? What if I don't want to?
   I am dismissed by the young man after being handed two pink "LYFT" stickers and told where to place them on my car, which he does with more care than any other instruction I have been given. I guess people who can manage apps don't comprehend "Put the sticker in the lower right-the passenger side-corner of your windshield. It's the law," he demonstrates on a diagram."Good luck," he says before turning to his colleague to continue their conversation about what happened Somewhere Trendy last night.
   I get home, actually feeling accomplished. I did it, I did a thing. I tap on the app.
   It tells me my inspection did not go through. It is expired.
   Confused, I send the photo again. How is it expired? I just did it twenty minutes ago and the guy uploaded it for me, there is no room for kryssi error here. Two hours later, when it still isn't approved, I go and retrieve the paper from my glove box.
   The judgey young man who silently mocked my inability to know how to turn on my own car lights, the Lyft inspection "mechanic", wrote down my inspection date as 7-14-9.
   I LAUGHED SO HARD I PEED.
   Finally, the next morning my inspection was "approved". The robots decided that he clearly meant "19" instead of "9" and allowed my application to be approved.
   All that I have to do now is plunk in my checking account information so they can pay me. I am paid from space, or the cloud, or eharmony or wherever. Now...which number is the routing number...
   And thus, by and by, All The Things are loaded and checked off and YOU ARE NOW READY TO DRIVE.
  Great. How do I do that?
  Harper had to walk me through a tutorial, as you click on the app, and then the wheel, and then things start to ding. What if I don't want to give them a ride? What if I don't know where they are? What if I don't know where they're going? Harper is more patient than I have ever known her to be. She is now more experienced than I, as she's been driving a few days.
   Well,  the things is you don't know where they're going, only where there are. I need so much information to function. I need to know where I'm picking you up and where I'm taking you before I even accept the ride, but that's not a thing.This information caused me to lose a night's sleep. What? What if I don't want to go to the airport today? I hate Aurora, I'm not going to Aurora. What...Harper patiently repeats herself: "You just follow the directions to them, and then to where they are going with no idea of where they are going until you are on your way there." No sleep that night worrying about this lack of information. How do people function like this?
    I make a choice this morning at 7 am. Am I going to be Lyft's bitch? No, I am not. I will do this, even if I have a panic attack and die and kill everyone in the process.
    I get up and open the app, and tap the steering wheel. Someone named "Allison's" face fills the screen with SHARED RIDE in pink and a blue line running under the post. I have no idea what's going on. When the blue line finishes, I'm told  by text I had 90 seconds to accept the ride, and if I don't want to I should tap the "X". I don't recall seeing an "X", so I panic and turn off my phone and go back to sleep.
   But wait, if I tapped the wheel I'm still on even if I turned off my phone, right?
   Right.
   Back on. Click off wheel. Breathe.
   Ok, so don't click it until you're in the car. Got it.
   I am going to do this. I get in the car, fill the gas tank, take a breath, open the app and tap the wheel.
   Nothing happens.
   Nobody needs a ride. I guess. Am I supposed to shop somehow? I'll just drive around I guess and see if it dings....DING!
    Chris' face comes up two blocks away. I tap "accept" and my radio turns off. I have plugged my phone into my car charger and the directions are now the boss of my car stereo. I follow the verbal directions---I've been practicing with google maps!---to his house. He emerges, gets in the back and I click "picked up Chris". The map to where were are going comes up, but my phone is in my lap so I can't look down to see where we're headed. So I follow the voice from Alameda to C470 to I 70. Now, I was just going to drive a bit before going to my 9am King Soopers training. It's 7.30 am, and the only reason you would go from Lakewood to I 70 is to go to the airport. This is where my brain goes, forgetting that I get on I 70 to go to work at the warehouse, but that's by the airport. This is who I have become, I live in a west suburb and work in a south suburb and I don't leave my bubble to get on I 25 unless it's to go downtown, and I 70 only goes west so I can leave town. There is no valid reason anyone would travel from a west suburb on I 70 east unless they are going to the airport.
    I stop breathing.
    It's fine, if he's going to the airport I'll just miss King Soopers training, maybe I don't want to work there, anyway.
   I try to glimpse my phone---there is a reason drivers have those dash clasps for their phones--and I see "13 miles". OK, not going to the airport. Cool
   Chris asks me to lower the back window a bit, even with the A/C on full the morning sun is a lot on his face.
    I take him to his exit, Pecos, and then the woman voicing my directions suddenly decides to stop speaking. Do I turn right or left? She won't tell me, and my phone is in my lap, I can't look. I say "She's not going to tell me, I guess, do I go right or left?"
 "Right."
  We drive two blocks, then Chris says "Actually, can you drop me off right here, at the coffee shop?"
  I pull over abruptly, as he's told me to stop as we are passing the coffee shop...clearly I've failed already, he can't get out soon enough, he doesn't even want me to take him all the way to work. It's because there was no music, I don't know how to play the radio with the directions going. I have already failed on my first ride.
   I look at the cute coffee shop, very trendy with a mural painted on the outside.There's a whole neighborhood back here, and apparently Chris' job is here as well. How is there anything of value between west and the airport? Who the hell am I? I used to know all the neighborhoods, worked all the funky theatres---in Houston I lived in an artist's warehouse, for God's sake.  Who Am I??!!! In the midst of my historical inventory and impending mental break, my phone dings again as he gets out and I tell him to have a good day. I pull around the corner to see that "Another ride has been added to your queue."
  What? Huh? I did not say yes, or swipe, or push a blue button, or submit to eharmony, what do you mean it's been added?
  I have 45 minutes to get back to Lakewood for my other job, I can't possibly take another ride unless they are also going to the King Soopers training center. Which I would not know, because where they are going is not displayed.
   I panic and start poking at the screen. Somehow I get to an "X" that says "Decline" and I do so.          Then it wants to know why. 
   None of the listed choices are "Because I have no idea what the hell I am doing and I need to get to my other job."
    I choose "It's too far." I think ahead enough to swipe my steering wheel icon OFF before turning off my phone, turning on my radio and heading back to Lakewood. First I have to navigate the Pecos/I 25 roundabout, why do we have these in Colorado, we are not Paris! When I get to the KS parking lot, I click on my Lyft dashboard to see my 35 minute adventure netted me $16.80. No tip.
   But OK, that's OK, because I DID IT. I did not sleep last night because of this bullshit, and I did it. I won. I worked with a robot. I did not cry. I did not wreck my car, and more importantly, I did not pull over and call a hard to find Lyft phone number and demand to speak to a human being.
   I may even do it again.
   First lesson: clear a few hours. Thinking you're going to just take people before you go to work is incorrect. They can make you keep driving by adding to your que without your permission.
   Scene.